Weaponized music

Nov 3, 2018

This photo is the work the U.S. federal government, so the image is in the public domain in the U.S.

The Noise Curmudgeon sends us to this Literary Hub piece on the use of loud music as a torture device by the U.S. interrogators in Guantánamo and elsewhere. Along with blasting music at a damaging 100 decibels, the torturers at Gitmo would play songs by female performers which were “chosen specifically to offend the religious sensibilities of Islamist prisoners,” among other things.

So what does one play to break the will of detainees? Some Britney Spears (that would break us), Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Mason, and the Barney and Friends, “I Love You Song.”

And for those who dismiss this awful tactic as torture, consider that the interrogators used loud music as a tool because “[i]t provoked fear, distress, and disorientation, crowding out the thoughts of the detainee and bending their will to the interrogators.”